ABSTRACT
Most of the investigations of mental ill health in communities have been carried out by psychiatrists using official statistics. These studies have followed different methods and have had differing objects (Reid, 1960). The methods by and large fall into two groups: the first proceeds by population census with case-finding from official sources, such as hospital admissions and clinic attendances, suicide and police records, education authority classifications, etc. (Lemkau, Tietze & Cooper, 1941; Roth & Luton, 1943; Øedegaard, 1946, 1952; Sjögren, 1948; Mayer-Gross, 1948; Carstairs & Brown, 1958; Hollingshead & Redlich, 1958); the second, by longitudinal study of a number of births followed up over a long period (Klemperer, 1933; Fremming, 1947).
